Analytical Chemistry for Assessing Medication Adherence

The lack of adherence to medication is a growing public health problem worldwide and is costing many patients their good health and healthcare systems billions of dollars. Analytical Chemistry for Assessing Medication Adherence introduces the concept of medication adherence/compliance and reports international perspectives on medication adherence while highlighting its importance. It then describes the opportunities for analytical chemistry to assess medication adherence and thereby provide an evidence base for clinicians to improve patient health outcomes. The authors highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each of the analytical techniques cited in addition to categorizing the findings in terms of the biological samples used to assess adherence and identifying methods to extract biological samples prior to analysis. The final chapter provides the authors’ perspective in this area, emphasising the importance of medication optimization for individual patients.

• Surveys the strengths, weaknesses, and appropriateness of existing instruments and techniques and points the way toward a program of therapeutic optimization
• Brings together data scattered amongst professional journals and other sources in a single convenient volume
• Presents the problem of adherence and the authors’ evaluation of possible solutions based on the analysis of patient bio-samples